Starting a new campaign with my Sunday group. We'd spent several months going through the Waterdeep campaign with one of the others running us through Dragon Heist and then Dungeon of the Mad Mage. We are just about at the bottom of Undermountain in that one and pausing to pull everyone back together as much as possible to wrap it up, think the characters are mostly 19th level at this point, and I'm confident that this is the furthest I've ever progressed a PC in a campaign, think I once played a one-shot with pregen 20th level characters but that is it, even playing old BECMI D&D with progression to 36th level and beyond never got that far. And I've been playing a bard (swords) which seemed perfect for Dragon Heist and maybe appearing slightly less so for Undermountain but it has actually been working quite well. Finding the melee bard is actually more of a caster in high level play, I've been surprised at the efficacy of taking Magnificent Mansion as his sole 7th level spell, we've been quite well rested after each adventuring day. Taking Unseen Servant and Magnificent Mansion also seems like a fine match for spells someone at the lower rungs of the Waterdhavian Nobility would find especially useful.
COVID definitely put us off stride with that one, as well as the AL campaign I was running for students at the school I work at which came to a sudden end in the early spring. That one I'd been running the AL campaign of .pdf releases for the last season, but I got tired of it after the third murder mystery got a little repetitive and moved them to Chult when they advanced to tier 2, at the behest of the Flaming Fist (apparently my favorite setting of late - also ran a side campaign using The Tortle Package and a couple other bits with the Sunday group during breaks from Mad Mage, they pretty thoroughly explored the Snout of Omgar and my son enjoyed playing his Lizard(man) Wizard Anthropologist in that one). Last few weeks as some of us have finally started getting together more frequently we've had the teen member of our group run us through a the first part of a third party campaign/adventure path to try out GMing, and I've actually forgotten the name of it, wasn't one I was at all familiar with though. We did lose a Warlock (played by his dad) in the first 15 minutes or so of play to a shambling mound. Also played a bit of Dominion and Quartermaster General (World War I version).
So I'm going to run Tyranny of Dragons for a bit, using the combined hardcover from WotC. Had some other ideas but my son likes the idea of ToD, maybe he likes the cool cover with the five chromatic dragon heads or something, and playing in the Realms is getting pretty comfortable for the group. We'll see how far we get, would be nice to at least get through the Hoard of the Dragon Queen half. I like the adventure, it seems to flow well, hadn't looked at it prior to the recent combined edition which it sounds like has cleaned it up a bit. We had our first session last Sunday, had good turn out with one of our players who has been out for months coming making it back. Our sessions are a little on the long side for my son (8 year old) unfortunately, clocking in at 4-5 hours typically. The younger kids we've had play have all struggled with that, I think. If I keep running this and want him there might have to chop the length of the sessions down a bit.
PC's
Link, (maybe slightly derivative) Wood Elf Winter Soldier Bard 1/Paladin 1 - Using Winter Soldier background from Hack and Slash Blog Compendium to represent being from another dimension and recovering from a long sojourn in the astral plane, now serving the Harpers to infiltrate the Cult of the Dragon.
Haggatha Sweetwater, Half Elf Hermit Warlock 2 (Undying Patron - perhaps a fey ghost/undead, an older half-elf woman who has recently made a pact, looking for Talis, a missing half-elven friend)
Exellence, Tiefling Wizard 2 (Diviner) - missing background on this one, apparently, but note mentions being from Daggerford.
Damakos, Tiefling Hermit Warlock 2 (Fiend Patron - OG Bone Devil, if I remember right. This was the player who had his warlock quickly killed the last time he made one and wanted to try one again).
Zumbruta, Leonin Outlander Barbarian 2 (From the Shaar plains in the distant South).
It's an interesting party mix, I think, with two Warlocks and a Wizard. Amazing how much punishment even a 2nd level barbarian can stand up to with Rage, as he was doing his job taking the hits. Link is kind of an unusual Dex based Paladin build, sort of an archer with some bard spells and musical ability.
We didn't quite get through the first chapter, and it was pretty non-stop action and followed close to the layout in the book. They started in a village a days march to the East, some of those traveling West met a couple characters lately of Greenest who were out looking for some of the raiders who had recently been causing so much trouble in the area. They all traveled back to Greenest together to find the town under attack, by assailants that included a Blue Dragon flying above. And the party immediately split...
The Tieflings Damakos and Exellence made for the cover near the stream and ran into some villagers who were hiding there as well. Excellence asked them to follow him downstream and out of danger while Damakos kept moving in toward the keep.
Zumbruta immediately charged into town, followed by Haggatha and after her by Link who took a moment to don his Cult of the Dragon disguise, recognizing the uniforms of the cultists. After fighting through some initial cultists on the edge of town (leading Link, who was further back, to drop his disguise again before shooting at them as Zumbruta charged in and roared) and finding some more town folk to escort to the keep this main group of the party ran into some kobolds chasing down a family of five. Damakos also ran into them at the same time, but from the other direction. A fight ensued, and Haggatha saved the parents who had been cut down by the kobolds with her Spare the Dying cantrip. Then they chased off a couple other cultists while herding all the townspeople into the keep, at about which time a panting Exellence arrived after having spent a fair amount of time running up and down the creek.
The party then came to the attention of the governor, who handed out some healing potions and put them to work, having them grab a prisoner - Link hoped to nab a cultist but all they returned with alive was a single kobold, who they pumped for as much information as possible.
They were then sent to rescue a group of townsfolk who were being besieged in the Temple of Chauntea. This was a pretty epic battle, while the group successfully ambushed and quickly dispatched the cultists behind the temple Zumbruta's rage was up and he charged the cultists the party had seen moving toward the other side of the temple, and soon they were fighting all the cultists who had been sent to the temple. It was a close fight, they may have been saved late by the intervention of the Chauntean priest who popped his head out the back door to see what was happening and tossed out a couple healing words to aid the party and bring Link back into the fight. Pretty much all their resources were spent at the end, I think Link still had his Lay on Hands and a Bardic Inspiration, but otherwise spell slots and rages were used up. But we wrapped up after they escorted this group of villagers through the secret entry back into the keep, figuring it was getting to about 2 AM in-game time.
With the big battle and incidental fights with cultists around town the party had over 50 kills of cultists, men at arms, kobolds, and ambush drakes so far. That has to be a pretty good thinning of this group of raiders, think they are drawing some attention to themselves, fortunately the only escapees of their wrath so far have been kobolds, and who knows what stories those survivors have been spreading...
